2-Day
2 days / 1 night¥50,000
Best forA first taste, alongside your own travel in Japan
See the details for 2-DayWe don’t wake the body. We wake the heart.
Awaken
Your Humanity
A life-awakening journey through elderly care and rural living in Japan
Before anything else
Let me introduce myself.
Three minutes, from the field behind the farmhouse. It will tell you more about what this is than the rest of this page can.
Japanese Care Experience by Kuromame-san — 3 minutes. The video loads only when you press play.
A note, so there are no surprises: the English in this video is spoken by AI. We are learning English ourselves, but we are not there yet. What we can do is close the gap with AI and whatever other tools help — and so far we have never had any trouble understanding each other.
What this is
You won’t just stand at a distance
and observe.
Every day, you’ll spend two hours learning practical care techniques based on natural human movement and safe ways of supporting older people.
You’ll also experience our unique approach to care, rooted in the traditional way of life in Kyotamba.
Growing vegetables.
Cooking together.
Making rice over a wood fire in a traditional Japanese stove.
Here, older people become the teachers.
You may come to Japan to learn about caregiving, only to find yourself learning from a 90-year-old woman how to make pickles or grow azuki beans.
The roles begin to change.
We don’t see older people simply as people who need help. We see them as people who can teach, contribute, and have a meaningful role in everyday life.
And when that happens, their expressions begin to change. Something inside them begins to awaken.
What you take home is more than caregiving skills.
The way you see older people changes.
And the way you see care itself changes.
That is what you will experience here.
Voices
What did they think of Kuromamesan?
Hear what they had to say.
27 years a nurse — what she learned in Japan.
She came to learn
Twenty-seven years at the bedside, and she still found something here she had not met before.
He came only to accompany his wife.
He came along
He had no intention of learning anything. He talks about what he found instead.
Three things I learned here.
A care trainer from China (14 days)
Someone who teaches care for a living, putting into words exactly what makes this place different.
All three videos load only when you press play.
How you spend your time
A day here: only two hours are fixed.
Every day from 3:00 p.m., we spend two hours learning practical care techniques. On your final day, the lesson is held in the morning instead.
You will learn how to support people when they stand up or transfer, while making the most of the movements and abilities they still have, and reducing physical strain on the caregiver as well.
At the heart of this approach is a way of using the body that shares principles with traditional Japanese martial arts.
Instead of lifting someone with force, we support their natural movement and help them use their own strength. The aim is care that is gentler for both the person receiving support and the person providing it.
You will learn these uniquely Japanese approaches to movement and care through hands-on practice.
These two hours are the only fixed part of your day.
The rest of the time is yours.
You might go out to the fields and harvest whatever vegetables are ready that week.
You can come to Kuromamesan and cook together with the older people who spend their days here.
You can ride a bicycle through the village or take a leisurely walk.
Or you can simply relax in the traditional old house and do nothing at all.
If you would like to go somewhere, we can drive you to the station.
Take the train wherever you like, and when you return to the same station, we will come and pick you up.
Here, it is not about filling your day with a schedule.
What matters is taking things at your own pace and gradually becoming part of everyday life in this place.
What one day might look like
- 7:00
Wake in the farmhouse. The mountains are still cold at this hour, even in summer.
- 8:00
Breakfast is served at the restaurant on our grounds. Eat at your own pace.
- 10:00
Out to the field, harvesting whatever is ready that week.
- 12:00
Lunch, cooked from what you picked. You are welcome to help.
- 14:00
Time with the elders. Conversation, tea, games, sometimes just sitting. This is the part visitors remember years later.
- 15:00
Hands-on lesson. Two hours. Rolling over, sitting up, the many ways to help someone stand and transfer — and whatever questions came up during the day.
- 18:00
Dinner. The village gets very quiet, and the sky gets very wide.
About meals
Breakfast and lunch are included. Breakfast is served at the restaurant on our grounds. Lunch we cook together, from what the field gave that day.
Dinner is not included. Tell us what you feel like and a member of staff will take you to an izakaya or a restaurant nearby. Or stop at the supermarket, and cook for yourself back at the farmhouse.
The day above is only an example. Nothing is scheduled except those two hours — from 3pm, or in the morning on your final day. It also shifts with the season and with who is staying.
Where you sleep
A traditional Japanese farmhouse.
Not a hotel. A real kominka, ours, right next door to the elder care center — wooden beams, tatami, sliding paper doors, and a garden that the season decides. It is warm in the way old houses are warm: slowly, and from the middle of the room. It is also wheelchair-accessible, because the families who visit us need it to be.
You wake up to birds and to somebody already cooking. For many visitors, the house is what makes the care lessons land — you are not studying Japanese care from outside it, you are living inside the life it comes from.
Certification
The Kuromamesan Ambassador Program
What it is
Complete a program of four days or longer and you receive the Kuromamesan Style Ambassador Certificate — our recognition that you have learned this way of caring well enough to carry it home.
What it is for
Ambassadors take these techniques back to their own workplaces and countries. Several now teach them to their own teams. It is how a small village in the Kyoto hills ends up in a care home on the other side of the world.
What comes after
We stay in touch. Ambassadors join a private group chat where they share what they are trying at home and ask each other for advice — all of us working toward the same thing: a world where growing old is something to look forward to.
Care that awakens the heart
Four plans. Same care, different depth.
The programme is called Care that awakens the heart — in Japanese, 心を起こす介護 — and it comes in four lengths. Every one includes the same daily foundation. What changes is how long you stay, and how deep you get.
| Plan | 2-Day | 4-Day | 7-Day | 14-Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Length | 2 days 1 night |
4 days 3 nights |
7 days 6 nights |
14 days 13 nights |
| Price | ¥50,000 | ¥100,000 | ¥175,000 | ¥350,000 |
| Care lessons | 2 hrs × 2 days | 2 hrs × 4 days | 2 hrs × 7 days | 2 hrs × 14 days |
| Ambassador certificate |
— | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | A first taste, alongside your own travel in Japan | Students and researchers seeking real-world care experience | Working care, nursing and welfare professionals | Those who want to go all the way in |
4-Day
4 days / 3 nights¥100,000
Best forStudents and researchers seeking real-world care experience
See the details for 4-Day7-Day
7 days / 6 nights¥175,000
Best forWorking care, nursing and welfare professionals
See the details for 7-Day14-Day
14 days / 13 nights¥350,000
Best forThose who want to go all the way in
See the details for 14-DayIncluded in every plan
- Hands-on care lessons, two hours every day
- Breakfast and lunch every day. Lunch is homemade from local ingredients — some of it cooked over the okudosan, the wood-fired stove
- Collection and return at JR Sonobe Station, and a car whenever you need one during the stay
- A traditional Japanese farmhouse to stay in — ours, next door to the elder care center, with Wi-Fi, futon, shower and air conditioning
- Photographs welcome. Share them anywhere you like
Not included: dinner, flights to Japan, domestic transport to the station, travel insurance, personal expenses.
The four plans in full
What each plan actually contains.
The table above is for comparing. This is for deciding.
01 — Care that awakens the heart · 2-Day
More than sightseeing — two days to touch the heart of Japan
A trial plan. You glimpse Japanese life and caregiving in between your own sightseeing, stay in a traditional farmhouse, and see the kind of care that lifts a person’s spirit rather than just keeping them clean.
¥50,000 Pilot price
Recommended for
- Anyone curious about Japanese caregiving culture
- Travellers who want one experience in Japan that is not sightseeing
What you do
- Rural life: chopping firewood, work in the field
- Cooking over the okudosan, the wood-fired stove
- A first hands-on lesson in Japanese care technique
- Time with the elders who live here
What you take home
- An introduction to how care works in Japan
- The link between everyday life and caregiving
- A first feel for Japanese transfer and support technique
02 — Care that awakens the heart · 4-Day
Four days that change the way you see care.
Our standard plan, and the most popular one. Long enough to stop being a visitor: you take on a role in the day, eat at the same table, and practise the technique often enough that your hands start to remember it. If you are not sure which to choose, choose this one.
¥100,000 Pilot price
🎓 Ambassador certificate on completion
Recommended for
- Those who want to study Japanese caregiving as a culture, not a checklist
- Students, researchers and working care professionals
- Anyone who wants daily life and human contact rather than a tour
What you do
- Share the work with the elders — the field, the kitchen
- Eat at a Japanese table together, every day
- Time in the villages, the hills and the quiet
- Care technique practised daily until it sticks
What you take home
- Japanese care technique, studied in order and practised properly
- How caregiving sits inside ordinary life here rather than beside it
- How repetition protects the caregiver’s own body
- A wider view, from talking with locals and with participants from other countries
03 — Care that awakens the heart · 7-Day
Go deeper into care — and see life differently.
For those who want to go further. A week is long enough to blend into the daily rhythm here, and to work through Japanese care technique thoroughly rather than sampling it.
¥175,000 Pilot price
🎓 Ambassador certificate on completion
Recommended for
- Working professionals in care, nursing or social welfare
- Researchers and educators studying Japanese caregiving in depth
What you do
- A week living inside the life of the village
- Days shared with the elders until the relationship is real
- How a care team is built, and how the place is actually run
- Japanese care technique, worked through thoroughly
What you take home
- Intensive practice in transfer care — standing, wheelchair, bed and bath
- A deeper understanding of the values behind Japanese care
- What it takes to build and sustain a care team
04 — Care that awakens the heart · 14-Day
Two weeks to learn care, live it, and rethink your own way of life.
The long programme, for people who want all of it. Two weeks of learning, living and being with others here expands what you think care can be — and most people leave with something closer to a philosophy than a skill set.
¥350,000 Pilot price
🎓 Ambassador certificate on completion
Recommended for
- Professionals in care, nursing or social welfare
- Researchers and educators wanting a systematic study
- Anyone who wants the daily life, the community and the caregiving as one thing
What you do
- A long stay in the traditional farmhouse, living as we live
- Roles shared with the elders in the field and the kitchen
- Daily practice from the basics through to the difficult parts
- Team care and how the facility is managed
- Time in the hills to slow down and reconnect with yourself
- Exchange with local residents and with participants from around the world
What you take home
- Transfer technique acquired systematically and practically
- A culture where care and daily life are not separate things
- How to protect your own body over a working lifetime
- Team care and community work, practised rather than described
- Your own answer to the question: what is care really for?
Before you press pay
Write to us with your dates first. We take very few people at a time, so we need to confirm the dates are free before you send any money. If you pay for dates we cannot host, we refund you in full — but it is slower and more annoying for both of us than a two-line email.
If you have to cancel
- 60+ days before arrival — full refund, less payment processing fees
- 59–30 days — 50% refunded
- 29–15 days — 30% refunded
- 14 days or less — no refund
If we cancel, you are refunded in full. If a disaster or an epidemic keeps you out of Japan, we move your dates within a year at no charge.
Ask about changing the dates before asking for a refund. Shifts change, leave gets cancelled — we know. Where we have space we would far rather move you than take your money and give it back.
Full terms and our business details are on the payment and cancellation page. Payment is handled by Stripe; we never see your card details.
About us
The older people here teach us.
Kuromamesan is an elderly care provider in Kyotamba, Kyoto — in the hills, where the villages are small and getting smaller, and where most of the people we care for were born.
Ten years ago a woman came to us who had been bedridden at home. We did everything properly: bathing, toileting, meals, transport. Then she told us she would rather die than be looked after like this.
So we stopped, and started asking her questions instead. What was your life like? What are you good at? Teach us how to pickle vegetables. Teach us how to plant azuki beans. We want to cook rice over the wood fire and we have no idea how — help us.
Within months she was walking with a frame, and smiling, and helping us. She had not lost the ability to walk. She had lost anything worth walking toward.
That is why we teach the way we teach. We gave up on care that only looks after people, and started recovering the old country way of living by being taught it, by the people we care for. Everything on this page begins with that one thing she said.
We are in Kyotamba, Kyoto Prefecture, in the Tanba highlands. Come to JR Sonobe Station and we will collect you — and take you back there at the end. Sonobe is 34km from Kyoto Station on the Sanin Line, and every limited express on the line stops there, so it is an easy approach with luggage. Most international visitors fly into Kansai (KIX) or Osaka Itami (ITM) and continue to Kyoto. While you are with us, a member of staff will drive you wherever you need to go.
Contact
Tell us when you can come.
Send us your preferred dates before making any payment. We confirm what is possible and answer your questions in English, usually within a few days.
Prefer email?
Write directly to kuromamesan20@gmail.com with your preferred dates and the details above.